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'Test' is not a four-letter word: Editorial Agenda 2014

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The Portland School Board is working on a resolution that will ask the state to delay the use of Common Core-aligned tests to rate teachers and schools. Board member Steve Buel, second from left, said Tuesday that he'd like the board to send the following message: "We wouldn’t do this test if we didn’t have to, and we think you’re making a mistake to ask us.”
(Stephanie Yao Long/The Oregonian)

The Portland Public Schools Board has engaged in a months-long exercise in hand-wringing – also known as drawing up a resolution – about the impending arrival of statewide tests connected to Common Core standards, which the state adopted back in 2010. The board fine-tuned a draft of the three-page document on Tuesday night and, as The Oregonian's Nicole Dungca reported, plans to vote on it July 22.

Like other districts, Portland does have some valid causes for concern, including the potential use of results in teacher evaluations and the logistical challenges of administering the new test in multiple languages. Love it or hate it, however, testing is a necessary partner for any set of standards, and the board's protracted fretting underscores, once again, the value of government officials at higher levels who are willing to play the "bad cop" and force local schools to evolve.

Being nudged from above is not a new experience for PPS, whose board chair, Greg Belisle, complained recently that the state was "overreaching" by prodding the district to meet minimum standards for instructional time. Now, a number of board members are grumbling in anticipation of the implementation next spring of the so-called Smarter Balanced Assessments for math and English. The vehicle for this unease is the ordinance the board considered in draft form Tuesday. It doesn't go quite far enough to please board member Steve Buel, who said he'd like to send the following message up the chain: "We wouldn't do this test if we didn't have to, and we think you're making a mistake to ask us." But the resolution says plenty anyway.

The document, for instance, raises the specter of "teaching to the test" and complains pre-emptively about the uses of test results: "The ultimate role of assessment is to improve instruction, not to demean teachers or principals or to label students or schools." (our emphasis) The resolution also complains about "nearly 20 years of budget cuts following the passage of Measure 5" and even questions the validity of the Smarter Balanced Assessment itself.

For these and other reasons, the resolution asks the state and federal governments not to use the results of next year's tests in evaluating teachers or schools. It's half right. Rob Saxton, Oregon's deputy superintendent of public instruction, told The Oregonian editorial board Wednesday that the state does not want to use the first year's test results in teacher evaluations and has, in fact, asked the federal government for permission not to. The feds haven't said "yes" yet, but have indicated that they will, says Saxton.

For good reason, however, he doesn't buy the argument that the results shouldn't be used to assess school performance next year. "I can't imagine that we would give students an assessment next spring and say, 'We're not going to use the results.'" As for the SBA's validity, Saxton calls it a "more reliable and valid" than the OAKS test, which it will replace, and says data will be plenty good enough to measure school performance, traumatic though the first year of testing may be.

The SBA will measure students in Oregon against shared national standards, raising the possibility that schools here won't look so great. Whether the truth is demeaning, to borrow the ordinance's language, depends upon your point of view. But using data, including next year's, allows education officials and members of the public to identify problems in low-performing schools. This is exactly what taxpayers and parents should want, even if the thought makes some staff and officials in Portland's largest school district uneasy.